A8 • HERMISTONHERALD.COM
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 21, 2018
COMMUNITY
Hermiston woman
celebrates 100 years
By JADE MCDOWELL
EAST OREGONIAN
STAFF PHOTOS BY KATHY ANEY
Since Doug Wagner trained as an electrician, four other family members followed suit. Flanking Wagner (middle) are son-in-
law Jeremy Kile, daughter Angie Kile, wife Pat and grandson Cody Kile, who is apprenticing as an electrician.
Family of electricians
shares high-voltage career
By KATHY ANEY
STAFF WRITER
Electricity
courses
through Jeremy Kile’s fam-
ily tree.
Kile is an electrician. His
son, Cody, is apprenticing
as an electrician. His wife,
Angie, works as a locomo-
tive electrician for Union
Pacific Railroad. Her father
and mother, Doug and Pat
Wagner, are semi-retired
electricians.
At holiday dinners, it is
hard to avoid shop talk, try
as they may.
“The
conversation
always turns to electricity
eventually,” Jeremy said.
In addition, another Wag-
ner daughter, Laura Stone,
works as estimator and man-
aging partner at Hendon
Electric in Hermiston.
This Hermiston family
of electricians is a window
into a profession that is very
much in demand.
“Right now, because the
economy is on a high note,
there is a lot of construc-
tion,” Jeremy said. “And
where there is construction,
there’s a need for electri-
cians. There’s a nationwide
shortage, not just of electri-
cians, but in all trades.”
“The recession really hit
the trades hard,” said Jen-
nifer Hills, who manages
the apprenticeship program
at Blue Mountain Commu-
nity College. “A lot of lit-
tle employers went away
during the recession.”
Electricians are espe-
cially in demand. They come
to Umatilla County from as
far away as Portland to fill
the gap, Kile and Hills said.
Regional Economist Dal-
las Fridley said electricians
made the list of the top 20
difficult-to-fill vacancies in
Oregon in 1917, the latest
data on the topic. The con-
struction industry in general
showed vacancies in every
region of the state.
“There were an estimated
627 vacancies for electri-
cians in 2017, and 502 (85
percent) were difficult to
fill,” Fridley said.
Kile’s son, Cody, 20, will
enter the ranks of licensed
electricians as soon as he
successfully completes four
years of classroom training
at BMCC and an apprentice-
ship with Gordon’s Electric.
The second-year student,
who grew up helping his dad
do electrical projects around
the house, remembers one
day when he and his father
readied a friend’s home for
an appraisal.
“We were redoing the
outlets and cover plates —
doing a trim out,” Cody
said. “I remember being
a 16-year-old and my dad
handed me a screwdriver
and box of receptacles and
said, ‘All right, here’s how
you do this. The hot wire
goes to this screw, the neu-
tral goes to this one and the
ground goes to this one. Go
ahead and make it happen.’”
Cody also got comfort-
able around construction
sites when he helped build
a house during high school
Cody Kile checks the voltage in one of the electrical panels at
Good Shepherd Medical Center during time as an electrician
apprentice with Gordon’s Electric.
as part of the Columbia
Basin Home Builders Pro-
gram. The home sits on a lot
near Armand Larive Middle
School.
Cody initially planned
a law enforcement career,
but changed gears after
Army National Guard train-
ing as a Chinook helicopter
mechanic.
“I’d been around elec-
tric all my life,” Cody said.
“I sat down with my dad. He
said, ‘Once you’re in, you’re
in. You have to give it 110
percent all the time.’”
Cody attends class one
evening a week. He first
worked with a journeyman
at Gordon’s Electric each
weekday, spending much of
his time doing electrical jobs
at Good Shepherd Medical
Center, and now apprentices
at Shelco Electric.
Each electrician in the
family came to the profes-
sion on a slightly different
path, with Doug leading the
way.
“It all started with Doug,”
Jeremy said.
Doug completed an
electrician course via mail
and on-the-job training in
Nebraska. He worked as a
locomotive electrician for
Union Pacific in Hinkle for
10 years and later opened
Doug Wagner Electric with
his wife.
Pat got her license as a
way to lighten her husband’s
load.
“Doug was working too
many hours and needed
help,” she said. “I went
back to school to become an
electrician.”
Like her son-in-law and
grandson would do later
on, she entered BMCC’s
apprenticeship program in
the mid-’80s and appren-
ticed with Doug. Pat, 31,
was the only woman in her
class. She faced skepticism
from members of the all-
male electrician trade board
that oversaw the program
for the state. One member
wondered aloud if she could
lift four-inch conduit.
“It was a different world
back then,” Doug said.
“They grilled her pretty
hard.”
Attitudes have changed,
they said, though males still
vastly outnumber females
in the trade. According to
DataUSA, 97.9 percent of
electricians are male. In
Cody’s cohort of 60 appren-
tices are two women.
Jeremy studied at BMCC
21 years earlier than Cody.
After doing electrical work
in the Navy, he came home
to Hermiston, got a job at
Marlette Homes and started
dating Doug and Pat’s
youngest daughter, Angie.
He got to know Doug, who
urged him to pursue the
electrician trade.
Jeremy
entered
the
BMCC program, appren-
ticing for Shelco Electric,
where he continues to work
today.
Angie came next. She
was one of 625 people put
out of work when Simplot
closed its Hermiston potato
processing plant in 2004.
Angie, who did quality con-
trol at Simplot, took advan-
tage of government money
for retraining and jumped
into a fledgling electri-
cian and mechanical main-
tenance program at Walla
Walla Community College.
Since she started in the mid-
dle of that first year instead
of the beginning, she faced
initial frustration.
“You can’t learn electric-
ity by osmosis,” she said. “It
doesn’t work that way.”
Fortunately for her, she
lived with an electrician who
filled in the gaps. She earned
her license and now works
as a locomotive electrician
with Union Pacific Railroad,
the same job her father did
early in his career.
“I work on the same loco-
motives he did,” she said.
“Some of the guys I work
with remember my dad.”
As Jeremy and Doug’s
careers progressed, they
acted as journeymen to
apprentices of their own.
Doug and Jeremy have both
served on the state electri-
cian trade committee that
guides the program. Jeremy,
who currently serves on the
committee, praised the lat-
est crop of applicants to the
program.
“We got 37 applicants
last time we opened the pool
and there were 20 already
on the list,” he said. “I’m
impressed with the qual-
ity. This is one of the best
groups to come through in a
long time.”
Those matched with a
contractor must complete
576 hours of classroom edu-
cation and 6,000 to 8,000
hours of on-the-job training.
Jennifer Hills, who
facilitates the matching of
apprentices and contrac-
tors and keeps records, has
watched the program evolve
for her 27 years as director
of apprenticeship. The pro-
gram now offers apprentice-
ship programs for a variety
of trades, including electri-
cians, plumbing, construc-
tion, industrial maintenance
mechanics, sprinkler fitters
and programmable logic
controllers.
Hills sees employers
stepping up to the challenge
and offering more appren-
ticeships as the economy
improves. She expects the
electrician shortage will
work itself out.
“I think it’s a matter of
time,” Hills said.
In looking back, Jeremy
Kile doesn’t regret his career
choice.
“It is challenging,” he
said. “And you get to see the
fruits of your labor.”
A Hermiston resident celebrated her 100th birthday
this week.
Joan “Jo” Katherine Lagerberg, who currently lives at
Guardian Angel Homes, turned 100 on Tuesday.
Her son Phil Hamm said he couldn’t say for sure
what her secret to longevity is, but he does know that she
was an avid walker until recently and has always been
involved in her community.
“I’m sure genetics are part of that, but being active is
important, and having a sense of purpose,” he said.
Hamm said she is also tough — something she had to
be when raising five sons on her own.
Lagerberg was born in Milford, Iowa, in 1918 as the
fourth of eight children.
According to informa-
tion provided by her fam-
ily, her parents spoke Ger-
man but encouraged their
children to speak only
English, because after
World War I “it was best
to be American.”
Lagerberg
gradu-
ated from Milford High
School as a valedictorian
PHOTO CONTRIBUTED BY PHIL
and trained as a milliner
HAMM.
afterward. In 1941, she
traveled from where she Jo Lagerberg turned 100 on
was working in Montana Tuesday.
to live with her sister in
Seattle, and when she got
off the train on Dec. 7 she was greeted with the news that
Pearl Harbor had been bombed.
In 1944, she married serviceman Ed Hamm and after
the war they moved to Bend and had five sons before
divorcing. Phil Hamm, the “baby” of the family, said
he was grateful to his mom for all she did for her sons,
including letting him raise racing pigeons.
“We used to have 100 pigeons in the backyard,” he
said.
To support her family, Lagerberg found work in Bend
as a sales representative for Deschutes Memorial Gar-
dens in Bend and eventually bought the cemetery. She
was married to her childhood sweetheart Ted Lagerberg
in 1982, but he died six years later.
Lagerberg moved to Hermiston in 1990 to be closer
to family, including grandchildren. She left for five years
to live in Portland, but returned to Hermiston in 2013.
Hamm said she used to coordinate trips for seniors
through the Hermiston Senior Center.
Now she resides in Guardian Angel Homes’ memory
care facility. She has six grandchildren, four great-grand-
children and one great-great-grandchild.
She celebrated her birthday early with family over the
weekend and with Guardian Angel Homes staff and resi-
dents on Tuesday.
———
Contact Jade McDowell at jmcdowell@eastorego-
nian.com or 541-564-4536.
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